Interview: Padgett Powell (Excerpt)

VH In a lot of your writing there seems to be a dis-ease with women.

PP I’ve heard that before.

VH How do you respond do it?

PP My dis-ease probably comes from my attraction. Writers write about the things that make them uncomfortable—hence the eluctable presence of a “problem” in fiction. And the problem is not just anyone’s, in the best of all possible worlds, it’s one the writer knows something about. That may be the first rule of writing.

VH But it sometimes seems that women are peripheral in your work. Sometimes they’re just not there.

PP Not there? They’re always there!

VH But in somewhat of a problematic way. I can’t help thinking of your story “Flood.” The woman is floating down the river while the narrator maintains a fairly banal conversation.

PP But she’s there.

VH Yeah, but she’s dead.

PP He’s in love with her, goddamnit. And the poet mooning along about his wives, alive and dead—it’s a flood of women, that story. World-stoppers, I submit. And you can’t dismiss the two novels before that. Women are the center of interest, the power source. Does that reflect my dis-ease? I don’t know. But I don’t think you can say they’re not there.

THE WHOLE INTERVIEW IS HERE: http://bombsite.com/issues/55/articles/1955